timeline planning

"Musk is known to have bad timeline planning"

An easily accepted claim, but is it actually true?

Falcon Heavy was delayed by about 5 years. But Falcon 9's thrust and payload capacity increased massively over those years, allowing SpaceX to take customers to orbit using Falcon 9 instead of Falcon Heavy. It would make no sense to fly a Falcon Heavy based on the old, impossible-to-land, expensive-to-refurbish Falcon 9 boosters from years ago.

Falcon 9 was supposed to send crew to the ISS by now as part of the Commercial Crew Program. That will probably end up at least 2 years late. But ULA's Atlas V is also in the running, and has seen the same delays. This could be chalked up to unrealistic NASA standards rather than poor planning on Musk's part. The same kinds of standards that end up delaying the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope for over a decade, but will somehow allow the Space Launch System to carry live human crew on its second flight because it's based on proven designs or something.

BFR has to potential to reach lower launch costs than Falcon 9, so it is slated to replace both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. It is a top priority for the company and the spaceship part is now under construction. It seems like they can get testing underway from 2019-2021, possibly with real launches as soon as 2022.

Re: Modular versus non-modular

What "they" failed to tell you is that all of the planned LOP-G (formerly Deep Space Gateway) components (there are 4 so far) have a mass of 10 tons or less (the first is 8-9 tons). The Falcon Heavy should be completely capable of flying these components to trans-Lunar injection orbit. What it won't be able to do is fly a manned crew capsule at the same time as the components, since SpaceX doesn't plan to human-rate Falcon Heavy, just Falcon 9 and BFR. Flying a Falcon 9 + Falcon Heavy is still about 5-15% of the cost of an SLS flight.

NASA's man managed to deceive some people with cheap justifications for the SLS. The components can fly on Falcon Heavy, and if the SLS program faces any more delays (maiden flight likely delayed to 2020, manned flight to 2022 if not later), it's possible that crew could fly on BFR.

I wouldn't count on a BFR Heavy. But if Congress really wanted to get bang for their buck, instead of SLS pork for their states, they could pay SpaceX to make the Interplanetary Transport System. That design could get 300 tons to LEO (reusable) and more to other destinations with orbital refueling. Compared to a modest 150 tons for BFR (reusable). And if NASA wanted to waste them like they will with SLS, they would get an incredible 550 tons to LEO, more than four times the best version of SLS.

High mass launches further reduce costs

The BFR not only has the potential to be cheaper than Falcon 9 to launch, but it can put 150 tons to LEO in reusable mode, and 150 tons to apparently anywhere when refueled in orbit. This allows you to send telescopes and such with much more mass, meaning they can use cheaper components. It also allows you to propulsively land on Mars and other locations, which could help you do the same with rovers since they would no longer need to land using a "rocket crane" or giant bouncing airbag.

This does NOT matter

Every single one of the planned SLS launches is to the Moon, with the upcoming ones building the LOP-G space station. Not Mars or anything. There was a planned launch to send Europa Clipper to orbit Jupiter, but the Trump administration's NASA budget proposal has indicated that mission will likely be flown on a commercial launcher instead.

By the time SLS is ready to go anywhere beyond the Moon, SpaceX's BFR will be able to send more mass faster, and even more so with in-orbit refueling.

Falcon Heavy's lateness never mattered

Payloads that were to originally fly on Falcon Heavy ended up flying on Falcon 9, because Falcon 9's design evolved so much.

It was also better to wait until Falcon 9 boosters could be vertically landed routinely, because Falcon Heavy has 3 of them and that is where most of its potential cost savings come from. Rapid reusability is also an issue: the Falcon Heavy maiden launch used Falcon 9 Block 4 boosters, but all subsequent ones will use Block 5, the "final" Falcon 9.

Falcon Heavy is a fun launcher but it will be made completely obsolete by BFR.

I have seen phones and other products (like the Nintendo Switch) that support microSD sizes of up to 2 TB. In other words, they will support this 512 GB card and bigger cards that don't even exist yet.

SD Association needs to increase the standard to allow greater than 2 TB cards, because that limit will be hit very soon.

Re: Get real

Re: Easily.

@Prst: "Is this going too far?"

It's not going far enough. Current SD standards max out at 2 TB, just four times the size of this card. And that includes the full-sized SD cards as well. In fact, it's past time for the Secure Digital Association to boost that ceiling to 32 TB or 1 petabyte, because there's probably no technical reason that a 2 TB SD card sporting some 3D QLC NAND can't be released in 2018-19.

There are plenty of applications where you want as high as possible of a data density. Spacecraft and drones come to mind. And while you may be able to fill your card up by being creative with audio books and Project Gutenberg, you can do it a lot faster by shooting some 8K resolution video, or 360 degree video for VR.

Internet

Re: to Mars - [women] consume less calories.

"Since we aren't likely to be shipping a large population to Mars, the sex-based average calorie consumption isn't relevant."

If it takes up to several months for your ship to travel to Mars, you have to have several months of food supply per person, and double if it is a simple flyby/orbit and return mission, as has been proposed before. The average man weighs more than the average woman, and consumes more calories. That's more weight redirected to food that could be instead used for radiation shielding, fuel, etc.

Given that shipping women to Mars will be cheaper to some degree than shipping men, you could consider starting a colony by including some frozen sperm along for the ride.

^ sees above comments about accuracy

boon for humanity

2015 RR245 will be closer to Earth than Pluto years before the moment of closest approach to the Sun. We'll be able to send probes there within the next 5-10 decades.

Finding an unexpectedly high amount of largish dwarf planets is a boon for humanity. We may eventually reach a point in technological development where we could live indefinitely on places like Ceres, Europa, Pluto, Sedna, or 2015 RR245. If Planet Nine exists, it will probably have some satellites we could live on as well.

"I don't want to live on a small. cold rock," you protest. Well, maybe it won't be choice. Just kidding, it really depends on the commute times between Earth/Mars and these distant objects. If 15+ year travel times could be cut to months or weeks, it would be much more tolerable and comparable to crossing the Atlantic or circumnavigating the globe centuries ago.

habitable?

So we have a planet more massive than Jupiter, super young (super hot?). If it has satellites, they could be tidally heated by the planet. The system is also exposed to light from 3 stars, albeit far-away stars.

Now this configuration doesn't seem like enough to make the conditions for life better than say, Europa. But perhaps there are other binary/triple star systems with an enlarged habitable zone due to the additional solar energy hitting planets.

uhh

"It found terrorist profiles including the Council on American-Islamic Relations executive director Nihad Awad, joined former US President George W. Bush in a post 9/11 press conference, and the organisation itself."

I don't get it. Do you mean "who joined"? And "the news organisation", referring to Vice News?

@Dadmin

Gawker, the media outlet

"But beyond the unnerving idea that a billionaire is prepared to use his endless trunks of money in an effort to destroy a media outlet because it personally upset him is the fact that Thiel is, in theory at least, a defender of the free press."

ick, ethicists

Yes, it is clearly a good thing. Do the research, find the issues with deteriorating memories, and learn how to nullify or reduce the brain and bodily damage down the road. Damage is damage. We don't write living people off just for having a traumatic brain injury. If death is just a reversible state, then assess the damage and act accordingly. And that's in the long run. In the short term, we should be reviving bodies left and right despite whatever horrifying outcomes are encountered due to damaged brain tissue. Hopefully they signed consent forms beforehand, but that is just a courtesy.

Re: I spot a trend here ..

Dream on, anon. Trump will become President of the United States of America in 2017. He will lay into that fake progressive Hillary with complete savagery. That's assuming he needs to and that the FBI doesn't end up indicting her, and maybe decides to take out one of her aides instead. #MakeAmericaGreatAgain